Who strengthens me

This is the notion I will drum into my children and grandchildren (and also myself): If you spend most of your time with people who exude integrity, joy, honesty, work ethic, faith and soul, you will assume the language and habits of these qualities yourself. If you spend most of your time with lazy, lying, irresponsible people you will adopt the language and habits of those qualities yourself.

I have become less than I was. I was trying so hard to love someone I thought I MUST love. I will, going forward, seek out people with habits and language that I aspire to and I will put forth good language and habits into the world, letting go of the hope, promises and dreams of dedicated marriage with my high school sweetheart in favor of growing up to be an adult with the fortitude of a person who is supported by strong, reliable people. I will go forward with a renewed faith that connection with God does not demand that I remain small but rather that I can do all things.

I am trying to reconcile these two truths. Love and Integrity. Where did I lose my integrity just trying so hard to love (verb) but being disappointed and resentful (feelings) in that attempt?

Comments

It seems that my relationship with an ADDer has been making me choose between love or integrity. For 40years I chose love. But if you are loving something or someone who is bad for you, who makes you a little crazy, whose habits and speech are less than you aspire to yourself, you are going to lose your own integrity. When a person loses their own integrity (honesty with themselves or going aginst their own judgment just to "get along") you end up hating yourself and hating the object of your love and feeling let down by Life. You are the company you keep - make sure the company you keep is good enough for you and that you are not "making" yourself BE in love because you think you should. These are words from someone who has tried to LOVE my H into a caring, communicative partnership. That just didn't work. My love was not as sparkly as the distractions he fills his mind and life with. "Getting away with" was more naughty fun than boring planning and cooperating. His distractions were easier for him than working at a marriage with me....me, who was willing to do the work and feel the emotions for both of us.

In my case, it seems, there was a lack of growing up on both of our parts. I was letting my romantic notions about love guide me and did not have control over my own emotions much of the time. He was not willing to give up his boyish, impish ways. He believes being "cool" is the most important thing in any situation.' Being cool for him meaning that he "looks" cool on the outside....never "giving in". His values have nothing to do with caring for others...he seems to value the hard stance that he is not "hen-pecked" or as he says, "PWd", and other words boys would tease each other about.

I have only been an emotional mother/authority figure to an impish man. Yikes! This has not been very fulfilling for me. He seems jubilant that he "made it" to Social Security...That was the extent of his goals. ...not realizing that Social Security is not enough to live on by itself but he deludes himself that it is and gets angry and hateful when I want to talk about anything other than jokes and teasing. I have lost my integrity because I believed that "love conquers all". It doesn't.

Although in those years ADHD wasnt in the picture, I lived so much of what you describe. Given what it took to move on, I've got permanent red flags that go up if I find myself relapsing.... Slip "Narcissist user" in the place of your husband in what you wrote, and that's me. No I dont think ADHD = narcissism, although it can be a comorbid, like it can for a non-ADHD person.

Jenna, I grew up thinking I was supposed to be nice, which meant subservient, as I was taught it; I was naturally affectionate and was taught that putting affection into action meant giving without counting the cost regardless of what came back. That was the so called unconditional love I was taught. You said romanticism, i think that's right. I believed like you that love conquers all. That was codependent hallucination. (I'm back to edit: I believe in the power of Christ and the healing, redeeming power of God's love. I dont believe, though, that my mind is right, if I think I am the Fixer, especially of othernpeople).

That integrity you bring up, is so necessary to loving well. Affection came easily but adult, integrated love didnt When I dated in my early adulthood my longest relations were with intelligent, immature boys who had grown up thinking that they were the center of the universe. Not hardcore narcissists, but ones who took and took, and gave not so much, except the pleasure of being around boys who thought they were superior beings. That tells you how far away from integrity I was at time. I gave it on a platter, they took.

Because I was supposed to serve, and love without concern for whether or not anything came back; because I as affectionate but with zero sense of my own dignity and as you rightly bring up, integrity, I stuck with these selfcentered boy-men, loving and thinking that my immature love was the glue of the relation. It was not. And then later, still having most of these interpersonal immaturities, I got involved with a real Narcissist, who wouldnt turn loose. And I got really depleted, and really lost myself. I've never had a religious life in which God bailed me out, found my lost cellphone for me, or given me big signs. Its probably as well. I needed to grow up and grow out of what I kept doing, sacrificing myself on the altar of some man's ego or dysfunction. I was the best source of supply that this Narcissist had ever found, more tolerating than other women, to hear him talk, more uncertain of what I was worth, a woman who responded to his infantilism and taking with love, or "love." He took, I "loved." I hear you, Jenna. Whatever you do in your present relation, I'm all for. I'm certain that God wants us all, not just some of us, well, and wants us to be free in soul.

After a long, harrowing fight to leave that last relation mentioned, I had a very long come to Jesus with myself, before God and Christ about myself. Looking for truth.. Part of those years involved looking hard at what makes relationships thrive and grow. Speaking only for myself, I found that my belief in the power of my loving was a hallucination, because I was presuming that love did things that love doesnt do. Like you, down to the syllable, I believed that If I loved enough and loved well enough, I, it, would solve all problems plus keep the relation together. That never ever worked, and was a decoy. What kept the relations with selfcentered boys and that class A plus Narcissist together was my lack of integrity and so, dignity, yes ma'am, and that I gave until it hurt, and hurt again and hurt again, without even asking for anything back. My love wasnt the glue, with a real Narcissist, love from someone else is either a sign of weakness or is a bitcoin to use to get something. Glue, heck.

Here's what is true for me. Love is a growing thing. It needs nourishing. If it is not nourished, it withers and dies. I nourish my love. My partner nourishes it. And he and I nourish his. We nourish ours. If we, or one of us ceases to tend and care for love in the relation, it withers. If love is alive,gives many things, hope, joy, if it is alive, the disposition to seek to be virtuous.

If love is not the glue of a relation, or its foundation, what is? Jenna, for me, I found my way to the integrity issues. They are the nourishers of love, to me, now in my life. The two I found are respect. And second, telling the truth, all the way down. I had been living in relations in which respect was lacking. Both I and the boys and the N were lousy at living in the light of truth. My husband does respect me. We both try hard to tell the truth. It has helped.